FROM THE 2023 MONTANA POET LAUREATE…
Winner of the 2018 Montana Book Award
and the 2019 High Plains Book Award
“La Tray is a perimeter man, seeing the reality in wildness yet dealing the best he can at reconciling truth in nature.” – Barry Babcock author of Teachers in the Forest
This book is a collection of poems and essays from the writer’s experiences of travelling through landscapes both wild and civilized. They speak with delicate simplicities ranging from the death of a favorite pickup truck, to the joy of hitting the trail with a four-legged companion. There are also profound observations that range from realizing he has become an aging hippie in a Carhartt vest, to the exhilaration of following the tracks of a grizzly in fresh snow.
“(This) book truly represents excellence in Montana literature and is an important contribution to the genre. The committee of readers was unanimous in our selection.” — Elizabeth Jonkel, Chair of the Montana Book Award Committee
“This book is proof of the power of language, even at its most spare.” — Russell Rowland, author of Fifty-Six Counties
“With a humble and grave generosity to all things and people who cross his path, La Tray reminds us all to slow down and take stock of our surroundings. Attention is the true work of a writer and poet, a tribe La Tray can proudly call himself to be.” — Charles Finn, editor of High Desert Journal
“This is a sunrise book, a book of revelations, of creekwalks and roadfood and ordinary sadnesses, ordinary joys—which are, in the end, the only kind.” — Joe Wilkins, author of Fall Back Down When I Die